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Sunday, February 20, 2011

Yes, I am alive and well, though it HAS been a difficult month. It seems that the clouds are lifting and the sky is blue again.

Sometimes I wonder if Ephesians 6:12 is possibly the cause of much more than we ever realize. I am not the type of person who sees demons and darkness behind every little incident in life. I believe rather firmly that every life happens to have a few curve balls.

But there are moments when things are just far to pronounced to be coincidental. The last three weeks have been like that for us, and one night last week dh and I finally looked at each other and verbalized what we had each been thinking. Something else is going on here, we are wrestling unknowingly “against principalities and powers, and rulers of the darkness of this world”. But why? Why now?And then it hit us.

Lexie’s adoption!

What we have just done with Lexie’s adoption is a picture of Christ’s love for each of us.
Lexie's adoption is

a light in darkness,
redemption in action,
a place of belonging in a lonely world,
it is Beauty out of the ashes of sin.

Why WOULDN’T this cause a disturbance in the spiritual realm and call forth an attack on our home?

Wrapped in each other’s arms we prayed together for strength, wisdom and courage for this fight. We have felt His presence and He once again has reminded us that after all He DOES know what He is doing, if we will just trust him.

This week we did our taxes and found to our amazement that God sure has His own ways seeing to all the details.

Let me explain, there is an adoption credit/deduction that has been in effect for years. Each year you can take a certain deduction from your taxes because of adoption. If your income is low this deduction can be rolled ahead to whenever you need it. This is nice and it has been of use to us but the deduction each year is not significantly large. Well, as of November 2010 these laws changed. Now the entire deductable may be taken at one time as a tax return, if we chose. WOW! That is a significant sum.

Between Nick and Lexie’s adoption credits, both of their adoptions will have cost us nothing. We are still waiting on Lexie’s birth certificate which has to come through before we can claim any of these credits. If all goes well, this should happen before April 15.

It was an incredible reminder to us that when you do what God asks of you, He will watch out for you. After such a hard month, it was really like a warm reassuring hug. I can’t tell you how grateful we are just now!

Maybe you have something big or challenging going on in your life, too. If you would like some extra prayer, leave a comment, I’d love to pray with you and for you.